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Count of covid cases and deaths has been highly politicized and manipulated in Florida to the point of firing people for reporting them.

Not sure how possible it is to get accurate info in this environment.


That’s why overall excess deaths are a better measure. You really can’t game them.
I think it’s still hard because deaths for almost everything else go down when people aren’t out getting in car crashes, picking the regular flu, etc etc.
Automotive fatalities were actually up substantially in 2020.
Also, locking down everyone (and its economic consequences) probably had / will have an effect on number of suicides (not sure if negative - I can't stand it, I'll kill myself - or positive - I can't stand it but life will be better after covid)
Surprisingly not:

"Widespread assumptions that suicide rates would increase during the pandemic are not supported by the growing amount of evidence coming out of Canadian provinces and other jurisdictions around the world, say experts who study the topic."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suicides-alberta-bc-s...

There should still be a difference between open vs close then since they open approach would still have people going out driving and getting the flu.
Not really. Excess deaths certainly are not entirely caused by the virus, so you still need to try to subdivide them somehow, which is once again a ripe opportunity for "gaming" / creative statistics.
But if you assume the main thing special about this year was the virus and strategies aimed at mitigating it, you can still compare overall outcomes between jurisdictions. If tight lockdowns decrease COVID deaths but increase other deaths enough to compensate then they didn’t achieve anything. It would be valuable to know the exact breakdown but you don’t have to.
Right, but my point is that it's hard to separate those things if your idea is just "excess deaths tell us the cost". So if lockdowns slow COVID but increase suicides... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know it’s easy to be a bit cynical once we take an abstract view.

Please let’s remember it is not a simple lever.

Let’s remember the overflowing ICUs and morgues and the very very limited menu of possible immediate actions - all this amongst unprecedented scrutiny, politicization and division.

We’re human. We’re doing the best we can. Lockdowns do flatten the curve.

People only say that since California is actually under reporting more than Florida.
Please stop spreading misinformation. Rebekah Jones was not fired for reporting data manipulation. She is simply a liar. All of her key claims have been debunked.

Please stop spreading misinformation. Rebekah Jones wasn't a data scientist and was never asked to falsify any numbers. She is simply a liar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/rebekah-jones-the-cov...

Claiming that on the back of an opinion piece in a partisan publication which seems not at all interested in neutral fact finding but revels in partisanship and plays this up as a political issue does not bolster your argument's credibility. Indeed it weakens it. I say that as a non-American who doesn't have a horse in the race.
Which facts in that article are incorrect?
Do you have a reliable source that the covid deaths in FL were manipulated downward?
Even if true, that doesn't suggest that the overall numbers are artificially low. That represents a reporting time gap, the deaths were still presumably counted correctly.

I think we need something much stronger before we enter into evidence such a powerful allegation.

EDIT: http://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess... seems to suggest California covid deaths were underreported to a greater degree than Florida. That would be even stronger evidence that Florida had better outcomes compared with the disruption.

Only Rebekah Jones, who left her last three jobs with criminal charges, has claimed that. None of her claims have ever been substantiated by a single legit source.

Only followers of fringe left wing Twitter believe any of that.

Somewhat related, on the opposite point. Elon Musk among others said the counting of deaths was manipulated upwards, with comorbidity being counted as a COVID death even when the patient had 2 or more serious health conditions already. I think there is a desire to overcount which must not be glossed over either.
>I think there is a desire to overcount which must not be glossed over either

So there was overcounting, but somehow excess mortality in 2020-2021 is higher than in normal years? How?

>with comorbidity being counted as a COVID death even when the patient had 2 or more serious health conditions already

A high percentage of people in the US have "serious health conditions" like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure etc. If Covid accelerated their deaths then it should be counted as a covid death because they would likely be otherwise alive now. If you want to get pedantic there's a measure called QALY(quality adjusted life years).

Musk said there would be zero cases in the US by April 2020 among other dumb predictions, so I don't think he's the best person to go to for Covid related information since his domain is technology and not epidemiology. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/03/13/elon-musks-...

> So there was overcounting, but somehow excess mortality in 2020-2021 is higher than in normal years? How?

People dying of heart attacks because they didn’t seek timely care because of fear of going to the hospital. Medical screenings postponed. Undetected cancers. Suicides. There is a direct correlation between unemployment rates and disease. My annual physical, due in July 2020 was cancelled. How many other people’s were as well? Also one also should note increases in deaths of despair. That’s a real thing.

Excess deaths can’t be called “covid,” without proof that they were. How would else know Covid was the cause and not the flu? Are we just assuming excess deaths were Covid? The uncomfortable truth is that lockdown proponents don’t want to admit that their policies may have caused more damage than the disease from which they were claiming to protect us.

I don’t know the answer. My point is that excess deaths aren’t necessarily Covid deaths. That’s an assumption, not a fact.

>Medical screenings postponed. Undetected cancers

Most of these will show up at a later time. And some of them were caused by hospital overcrowding, doctors trying to save themselves etc. not lockdown.

>Suicides.

Suicides are down.

>My annual physical, due in July 2020 was cancelled. How many other people’s were as well?

How many people die within a year due to something that's caught in a physical? I'd say barely any. If you're counting them then you should also count the lives saved by reduced pollution due to the lockdowns.

>Also one also should note increases in deaths of despair. That’s a real thing.

Suicides are down.

>Excess deaths can’t be called “covid,” without proof that they were. How would else know Covid was the cause and not the flu?

Because flu deaths are included in normal rate of deaths. If you're saying there are multiple times the number flu deaths than during a normal year with no measures to contain it, and it doesn't show up on the yearly disease surveillance, then you're arguing in bad faith.

>The uncomfortable truth is that lockdown proponents don’t want to admit that their policies may have caused more damage than the disease from which they were claiming to protect us.

The uncomfortable truth that pro-covid(and anti-vax people) don't want to admit is that their attitude of calling covid just a flu or something less harmful has caused death, disease, hospital overcrowding, increased number of lockdowns due to increased cases/deaths, and damage from the lockdowns. Compare the economies of countries that strict lockdowns but were able to open up sooner like Australia, New Zealand, China etc.

Do you think people will keep participating in the economy and crowded events etc. at the same rate if there are scenes like this at hospitals? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Y1YakG60s

Now that things are opening back up, if there is hospital overcrowding and more covid deaths and cases due to the pro-covid and anti-vaccine people, then who is to blame for the economic damage and death from ensuing lockdowns?

I’ve been wondering recently... should I appoint ELon Musk as an authority on everything or not?

The jury’s still out in my case.

The firing of that official — there is a lot more to that story.

https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/05/20/rebekah-jones-firi...

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